I still don't understand the hype. Maybe because the first book was a colossal pile of crap, this seemed slightly less craptacular? I still can't put my finger on what made this more tolerable. Catching Fire didn't result in the epic tantrum that The Hunger Games caused. The writing style is the same (lousy), and character names have only become more ridiculous (Gloss, Cashmere, Enobaria, Wiress, etc) or lack of names a la the Morphlings. The plot twists were predictable and exactly what I had guessed. Suzanne Collins still needs a thesaurus and an editor willing to stop swooning over her every word. Part of me is convinced that she must have been out of her mind high on Percocet to have come up with this series. It would certainly explain the choice of character names. And the ripping off of quite a few other books. *Cough* Battle Royale, Blade Runner, Lord of the Flies *cough*.

And Panem backwards is Me Nap. Coincidence, I think not.

Everyone needs a mindless read sometimes, and in the world of lousy YA lit, I much prefer the Twilight series and Stephenie Meyer.